


we're not a gang, we're a club

by sictransitgloriamundi



Series: from the desk of Courier Six, representative of the Sovereign City of New Vegas [5]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas, Il buono il brutto il cattivo | The Good The Bad and The Ugly (1966)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Fade to Black, FalloutFebruary2020, Femslash February, Femslash February 2020, Multi, mostly critical worldbuilding smart characterization and fun interactions between good friends, other additional tags in chapter summaries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:20:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22416160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sictransitgloriamundi/pseuds/sictransitgloriamundi
Summary: The robot cowboy's screen beamed at Courier Six. "Congratulations, pardner! The boss has instructed me to comp you the High-Roller Suite! You can bring your friends, too! Be like a little clubhouse for the gang you put together!"or, how my Courier met all the companions. Set within a larger FNV/The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly crossover, this can be read alone and with no further context.
Relationships: Christine Royce/Veronica Santangelo, Female Courier/Christine Royce, Female Courier/Christine Royce/Veronica Santangelo, Female Courier/Veronica Santangelo, Female Courier/Veronica Santangelo/Christine Royce
Series: from the desk of Courier Six, representative of the Sovereign City of New Vegas [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1392433
Comments: 22
Kudos: 24





	1. preventative measures, signs & symptoms (radiation, arcade)

**Author's Note:**

> All of these are set before the end of the game/ the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. I’m going to resort these into chronological order once they’re all done.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You...good?”  
> “Well. I didn’t expect a morality discussion from you of all people, but sure, what’s up?”  
> “Just a monthly checkup on all my inter-employee relationships,” she said, and took an ostentatious sip of sarsaparilla.  
> “Hold up, if I’m an employee when do I get paid?”  
> “This is a terrible hold up. All I have to offer is the pleasure of my company.”  
> Arcade slid down further in a folding chair. “It’s better than some other company I’ve had lately.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is rated T at best for bad jokes, no additional warnings apply. Additional tags: Science! discussions, a somewhat more accurate depiction of nuclear science, wlw & mlm solidarity.

When the casino lost power for the third time that week, Courier Six started doing what she said she liked best- wandering around talking to people. She asked teachers and tinsmiths and techs, mostly ghouls who’d lived there forever, ancient people who’d been grandparents before the war. She ended up having to call in specialists, a crew of ghoul scientists-turned-scavvers who’d been working “somewhere left of Albuquerque” when the bombs fell. 

* * *

Six left a blurry forehead print against a staticky dead monitor in the Lucky 38’s reactor control room. She dropped a clipboard onto a control panel and heaved into a huge red leatherette chair, rolling a few inches back into Arcade. 

When he didn’t protest, frown in place, unfocused gaze still on the one tiny live monitor, she spun around and clipped him with an armrest. “You...good?” 

“Well. I didn’t expect a morality discussion from you of all people, but sure, what’s up?”

“Just a monthly checkup on all my inter-employee relationships,” she said, and took an ostentatious sip of sarsaparilla. 

“Hold up, if I’m an employee when do I get paid?”

“This is a terrible hold up. All I have to offer is the pleasure of my company.”

Arcade slid down further in a folding chair. “It’s better than some other company I’ve had lately.” 

“Breakups are hard! I just want to make sure one of my oldest and dearest friends is all right!”

“It was a two-week fling, Six, I wouldn’t call it a breakup.”

“Three. And you’re moping.”

“Look-”

“You want I should fire Blondie?” 

“We’re all grownups. I’m hardly a whirlwind of revenge when left to my own devices.” 

“But do you want me to fire him?” 

Arcade stared off into the middle distance while Six finished her sarsaparilla.

“No. But if you have any long, tedious jobs that would take him _and_ Angel out of Vegas I would appreciate it, as a personal favor.”

“Done.”

Arcade said, trying and failing not to sound miserable, said “You think him and Angel? On the long cold lonely trail to wherever you’re sending them off to?”

“I think they’d like to be a thing. They’re a good pair, professionally. Very good at whatever it is they do.” 

“Something very adjacent to whatever it is you do.”

“Arcade, are you implying I don’t know what I’m doing?” 

“I would never.” he lied.

“Good. Glad that’s settled.”

“House’s _Rules of Management_ , sixth edition, was right. You shouldn’t let employees date.”

“You’ve just claimed to be a grownup. They generally get to make their own decisions. Also, then I’d have to break up with Veronica.” 

“I think you’d have irritated House to death if you hadn’t stabbed him.”

“It was just a little stab! For a little death!” She started laughing wildly, kicking off from the desk. 

Arcade slouched down further and sighed, watching the ghouls stand around and poke at some mold on the floor.

Six said, between hiccups, “ _La petit mort_ , if you will!”

“I will _not._ ”

She popped back up over the back of the chair. “Arcade, I’m not going to stab _you_. You’ve stabbed me more.”

“By _getting stitches_? That’s a reverse stabbing, if anything.”

Their argument over what exactly qualified as a stabbing, medically, was interrupted by Raul hitting the buzzer to be let out. 

“Well, let’s go make sure the ghouls don’t have radiation poisoning.”

Six stood on the chair and said, “Aw, that’s how we met!” in the indulgent tones of a woman who faced certain violent visceral death so many times she could not envision death by something invisible. 

“Yes,” Arcade said. “I took your pants off, you made a truly horrible joke, worse than the one you just made, and then passed out right on the table.”

“I don’t remember that,” she said in the resigned tone of a woman with less than a year of memories. “What was the joke?”

“Unrepeatable.”

“More like undefeatable.”

Arcade sighed. 

* * *

Six shouted into a microphone like she was trying to shout through the thick pane of glass and the radiation suit faceplates. “Dr Wu, Dr Meyer, Dr Woods, Mr Sengier- what’s the verdict?”

The microphone in the decontamination room squealed as all three women all tried to talk at once. Raul and Sengier stepped back in alarm and resignation.

Dr Woods shouldered the other two out of the way. “You’ve run right out of gas!”

Dr Meyer asked over her shoulder, “The jump-start from the solar plant didn’t do anything at _all_?” 

“Well, nothing good. Blew some fuses, started a little fire.”

“Boss, I know my glaucoma’s acting up but that was at least a medium-sized fire.” Raul said.

“Yeah, but it was in a concrete room three hundred feet underground, so nothing _actually_ happened.”

Dr Meyer soldiered on. “I see you’ve got an ACME reactor here. House and ACME had a...tenuous relationship, even before the Canadian conflict.” 

“Not surprised he got substandard pellets.” Dr Woods added cheerfully. 

“Don’t think he would have gotten a fairer shake from National Electric.” Dr Meyer said. 

Dr Wu took the conversation back. “You need to replace the rods. All of them.” 

“The generator rods? They were fine until we could get power from the Dam, just slow-”

Raul and Dr Wu’s no’s overlapped before Dr Wu continued. “The fuel rods. All fuel runs out eventually, even nuclear. You’re a decade overdue for a fillup.” 

“It’d be better if you were further south, but these mountains were lousy with mines. You can probably cobble something together locally.” Dr Woods said. 

Six had a blank, panicked nightstalker-in-a-spotlight look as the doctors argued about decay rates. “Ah. You need my girlfriends.” 

Arcade cleared everyone and put the radiation suits away by the time Veronica and Christine got down the stairs and started talking atoms. 

Sengier gave Six and Arcade a resigned half-smile, the only other people who weren’t three reference books deep in a conversation. 

Six gave him a polite nod. “Mr Sengier, do you have a professional nuclear opinion?”

“Goodness, no, he just carries things and looks pretty. But my point stands, you couldn’t _possibly_ convert this to a thorium-salt-” Dr Woods turned back, pointing at a table of figures. 

Sengier said “Hey now,” all bark and very little bite behind the smile lines still carved deep into his noseless face.

Six chose a different thread, spliced it into the conversation. “Well, how are you finding my city?”

“Lovely, thank you. The Tops reminds me so much of my favorite haunt in New York, before the War. Perhaps a little less subdued.” 

“Did you all meet there, before the War?”

“I didn’t run in the same circles as Woods and Meyer, but we all converged on the desert for testing. And then it all ended.” he finished with a tight smile. 

“Nonsense,” Dr Meyer said. “It was the beginning of a great new chapter in radiation research!”

“None of us knew that bunker existed. If you hadn’t forgot to return that key we’d all have died on the spot.” Dr Woods added, trying to turn her humor a little more somber and missing humor entirely.

“Pity we can’t publish that data. The War killed _Physical Review C_ , so many non-disclosure agreements and government work.” Dr Wu said. 

“My h-index must be abysmal by now.” Dr Woods said.

Six waited for the ghouls’ laughter to die down. “Mr Sengier, let’s get you a drink and a map. I have an idea of where to send you, and who to send you with.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> toss a comment to your writer, o radioactive desert valley of plenty
> 
> Title from this tumblr post about an ad [“how to tell if a guy likes you”](https://actuallygomezaddams.tumblr.com/post/190264219146/yeah-hi-google-this-is-the-funniest-fucking-ad)d
> 
> A fun thing I like to do, instead of sleeping, is think about how the fuck the Lucky 38′s reactor works. Which kind is it??? What the fuck does House or Yes Man MEAN when you have to go to the electrical substation by the solar power plant and flip a switch to “kickstart” the reactor??? Did House have fuel rods/a core just sitting ready to go, but needed a huge boost of energy the fragile Mojave power grid couldn’t handle to actually get the physical machinery up and running? Unlikely on SEVERAL levels, mostly safety, you can’t really just leave fuel…sitting for two hundred years. How the fuck did House keep getting new radioactive material over two hundred years? Was the power draw so low (assuming he’s just recharging Securitron batteries/his life-support system) that he could get away with one batch of fuel??? PLEASE HOW DOES THIS WORK???
> 
> [“Left turn at Albuquerque” ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8TUwHTfOOU)
> 
> “I’m hardly a whirlwind of death when left to my own devices” is a line from the game when you ask Arcade not to engage enemies unless fired upon. 
> 
> Radiotrophic fungus is some WILD shit and I am afraid of it.
> 
> The team of ghouls are all named after people who worked on the Manhattan Project.  
> Dr Wu- Dr Chien-Shiung Wu, the First Lady of Physics, the Queen of Nuclear Research.  
> Dr Mayer- Dr Maria Goeppert Mayer, the second ever woman to win the Nobel (for the nuclear-shell model of the atom).  
> Dr Woods- Dr Leona Woods, the only woman to work on the world’s first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1, and the Manhattan Project.  
> Mr Sengier- Edgar Sengier, owner of the uranium ore that kickstarted Manhattan Project. He shipped it to the States from his Belgian Congo mine before WWII to keep it out of German hands, where it sat in a warehouse in Staten Island until the government asked him to help them find ore for the Manhattan Project, to which he answered "You can have the ore now. It is in New York, a thousand tons of it. I was waiting for your visit." 
> 
> “I know my glaucoma’s acting up-” another in-game line. GOD I love Raul. 
> 
> The main construction company in this universe (the same one that built Sinclair’s casino/resort town in Dead Money), is National Electric not ACME. I think an ACME-branded nuclear reactor is maybe one of the funniest things I can think of. 
> 
> Physical Review C is the nuclear research journal. Almost three-quarters of all theoretical and experimental papers in that field are published there. 
> 
> An h-index is a not very good measure of a scientist’s productivity and impact on the field by looking at how many papers they’ve written and how often those papers are cited.
> 
> one million thanks to tumblr users @teacupnatasha for betaing this and @sybilius for providing color theory assistance


	2. half remembered rumors of the old (different era aesthetic, lily & rex)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Six came home with two very unhappy dogs and a grim-mouthed man wearing an NCR beret.  
> Struggling with a big gray dog trying her muzzled best to take off a Securitron’s arm, she jerked her chin over to the man hauling a cowering old brahmin dog over the threshold. “This is Boone. Get Rex. We’re going to Jacobstown and fixing him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Courier Six gets her robot dog fixed and deals with ethics in science and the concept of family. Additional tags: Teddy Roosevelt 1900s lodge, comfort sex, femslash february, characters dealing with scohophobia and dementia, unethical science, a dog dies offscreen, dogs as a source of protein. No specific gory details are given re: dogs.

Two days after Six left south, Mark of Caesar burning a hole in her pocket and the Legion spy who gave her Caesar’s invitation burning in a dumpster behind the Tops Casino, there was a muffled explosion from the Legion fortifications across the river. 

Veronica, heart in mouth, tracked radio chatter and her progress home over the next four days. Novac to ranger station Echo, where the scuttlebutt was she took back Cottonwood Cove from the Legion. Echo to the 188 trading post. A full day between updates after the 188, until the local CB band put her at the Freeside gates. 

Six came home with two very unhappy dogs and a grim-mouthed man wearing an NCR beret.

Struggling with a big gray dog trying her muzzled best to take off a Securitron’s arm, she jerked her chin over to the man hauling a cowering old brahmin dog over the threshold. “This is Boone. Get Rex. We’re going to Jacobstown and fixing him.” 

Wrangling three unhappy dogs among two people was only possible because they were all very old. 

Their small parade attracted some attention. The only dogs that stayed leashed in the city were lean jackalope hounds, anxious and flighty in the loud stench, preferring to roam a half-mile or more ahead to flush out prey in the flats between Black Mountain and New Vegas. Other dogs- the self-important little ratting terriers, the brahmin herders, the big carting dogs that carried small-time scavvers’ and traders’ supplies, the tiny hairless things that alerted shopkeepers to customers- if they didn’t do their jobs well and stuck close to their owners, they found themselves in stewpots. 

The big angry wolfy-looking thing was an ex-Legion dog, Lupa, whose misgivings and aggression transferred over to the normally well-behaved Rex. Rex kept trying to forge on ahead as fast as his aging servos would let him, desperate to meet Lupa after a solid rebuff from Rey. The brahmin dog was on edge, not enjoying the delights of New Vegas and pulling hard to go back south. 

They only made it to a motel on the outskirts of Westside that night with a quick detour to pick up a new shotgun choke from Tchebysheff’s. 

Dinner logistics were miserable for everyone involved. Rex and Rey were in a state of nervous detente, but hated Lupa, who hated them back but couldn’t deal with being out of sight of both humans. They barricaded Rey behind two low dressers she couldn’t jump over. Rex was curled up on Veronica’s feet on the bed. After Six washed a week of travel off, the Legion dog ended up in the tub with a bone, hips too bad to jump out by herself. 

Six hadn’t even bothered wrapping her hair up, dripping onto the questionable motel floor. Padded over to Veronica with just one threadbare towel wrapped under her arms. “Distract me.” 

“In front of our kids?” said Veronica, and immediately regretted it, the way Six’s face crumpled with too many emotions at once. 

“Arcade says he doesn’t think I’ve had kids. I guess there could be someone I adopted, waiting somewhere, or a kid sister, but I don’t… I don’t remember.

“Kids aren’t a concern with us anyway.” She tucked herself under Veronica’s chin. 

Veronica brushed her damp bangs out of the way and kissed a scarred temple.

Six told her shoulder, “I don’t want to talk about the Legion.” 

Veronica packed away the overwhelming majority of her questions.“Okay. Who’s the new boy in the casino?” 

“Boone? Ex-NCR. Helped him avenge a murder. Can’t go back to Novac for a minute, which is fine, it’s a  _ shithole _ .” she said with more venom than Novac deserved. It was boring, but it was still a rare semi-successful community away from the bulk of New Vegas and the Dam. 

Christine would have liked to talk to Boone, Veronica thought. Trade sharpshooter secrets, or whatever it was snipers talked about amongst each other. The pain of missing Christine was never going to scar over, even with a beautiful mostly-naked woman in her arms taking shuddery breaths into her neck. 

“What happened in Novac?”

“Not my story to tell.” 

“Okay. What’s in Jacobstown?”  
“A man that can fix Rex.”

“Why are you going to so much time and effort to fix this one dog you claim to not even like?”

Rex, sensing he was part of the conversation, moved his heavy head onto Six’s hips. Not paying attention, she scratched behind his ears. “A dog is a tool, like a gun or a body. We need the Kings on our side. Well, we need  _ the  _ King on our side. I don’t give a single solitary fuck what Pacer thinks.” 

Veronica held her tighter, trying to transfer the warmth of that  _ we _ , that  _ our.  _

What neither of them said was that it was a good excuse to get out of the city and away from House.

“Do you want to go check out a weird bunker when we get back?” Six asked, chin over Veronica’s shoulder. 

“Of  _ course,  _ who do you think I  _ am _ ?”

“Why so many questions tonight?”

“Is this not how you wanted to be distracted?” she asked, and ducked. “You can’t hit me, I’m your girlfriend!” 

“That’s not what you said before I left-”

* * *

Veronica did successfully tire Six out, which was probably as good a distraction as any.

* * *

Lupa calmed down once they were out of the city, when Rex and Rey were in front of her where she could watch them. She remembered she’d been a working dog once upon a time and stayed alert as her dulled senses could manage. 

They crashed in the Followers’ safehouse in the foothills for the night, a weird blend of local adobe and salvaged brick patching the pre-War timber frame. 

Dr Luria arrived after sundown to restock the fridge, setting all the dogs off.

“Pack of regular Bullet the Wonder Dogs over here,” Veronica told them, letting her in. 

Dr Luria immediately made friends with all three, nodded to Veronica, and brightened when she saw Six. “Oh, you’re finally fixing Rex! I didn’t realize fixing him would mean another dog dies, but that makes sense, I guess.”

They all looked at Rex’s see-through plastic skull, brain probably greener than a brain should be. 

The climb up to Jacobstown was beautiful but miserable, freezing wind whipping down the old access road, plenty of wildlife to get all the dogs barking constantly, a short and sharp argument about how Veronica trying to make friends with Lupa was a pointless effort. 

They spotted the mercs outside the gates straight off, even with Rex and Lupa and Rey’s delayed reactions, all three dogs wheezing with the altitude. 

“You’re that courier,” one of them said in awe, a slight woman in heavy leathers.

“ _ The  _ Courier,” Six said, wrapping the leash around her wrist again and looking as feral as Lupa trying valiantly to snarl at them through the muzzle. 

The mercs decided they were not being paid enough to deal with Six and left. 

For a woman with less than a year of memories, Six seemed to know everyone, including the super mutant guarding the gates. 

Jacobstown was not like New Vegas. It wasn’t like anywhere Veronica had ever been before- snow, bighorner, a two-headed elk browsing on a slope behind the lodge, trees  _ everywhere _ . Real actual storybook trees, smelling of cleaning fluid! It was rough and rugged in a way the sandblasted adobe of the Mojave wasn’t, like someone recreated a fond childhood memory and kept it hidden here, time pooled at the bottom of this tiny mountain crater. 

A super mutant in a straw hat barrelled over to Six and Lupa, who pinned her ears flat and backed down fast.  
“Becky? Little Becky- my, how you’re grown up! So good of you to finally come visit your grandma!”

There had been a very bad moment, right after Six met Veronica, when they tangled with a Legion raiding party and Six took a bullet close-range. She had got up. She always got up. She looked awful from the bruising and her bulletproof vest was done for, but it did its job keeping her insides inside.

Present-day Six looked worse, saying in a very small, uncertain voice, “My name isn’t Becky.” 

The super mutant, about to wrap her up in a hug, stepped back just as uncertainly. “Oh. Oh, of course not, dearie. How silly of me. I didn't take my medicine yet today. How can I help you?” 

“Here to see Doc Henry.” Veronica interjected. 

“Go right in, pumpkin, he’s usually with that nice Calamity by all those doctor things!”

Several less friendly scopophobic super mutants waited inside. Six, distracted and immediately curious, fired off questions in their leader Keene’s general direction. Why did the StealthBoy technology affect them like this? Did sunglasses count, or were they worse because they couldn’t tell if she was looking at them? Was a hat okay? What if they talked from opposite sides of a corner hallway? 

Doc Henry, less startled than he should be to find a working robodog a million miles from the coast, sent Six off on some brahminshit patrol, shoulders up around her ears, jammed into a ski lift with Lily.

Everything in the medical wing was as rustic as the hotel, and Veronica nursed some private doubts. Six needed a win, or at least some certainty. Better to try and fail than watch Rex waste away like this, brain getting foggier under the failing biogel. 

She tried and failed to place Henry as he crated the dogs. If there were independent groups with this level of skill out wandering the desert, the Brotherhood didn’t know about them, and that was worrying. He had a poor opinion of most of the Mojave groups, and kept shutting down his stalwart ghoul assistant until she finally dragged Veronica off to the kitchen on the pretense of starting a new pot of mesquite tea.

“I’m Calamity. Sorry about the doc, he’s...set in his ways.”

“What a lovely name!”

“Thank you. I change names and jobs every decade or so, just to keep things interesting. I picked Calamity this time because it sounded nice. 

“I've never really done much science stuff until now. I'm all right at it, or so he tells me. What’s wrong with your robodog?”

“His...brain? Is failing. We brought a couple options.” 

“I can probably handle him on my own while the doc keeps working on the nightkin problem. Just the same as changing a light bulb, except stickier and smellier, right? Anyway, don’t worry about anything until tomorrow. We do dinner around seven here.”

The lodge wasn’t like the the carefully engineered facade of House’s Camp Golf- plaster chipping away, faux timber revealing itself to be carefully textured concrete. Like Camp Golf, it was home to a small army of spiders. There was a pinball machine in a back room that Veronica evicted spiders from and fixed out of sheer boredom.

Six didn’t get back until halfway through dinner, when Veronica was starting to wonder if there was enough juice in the pre-War flashlight to go looking for her. 

Through and after dinner, through an argument between Calamity and Henry on the best way to treat the super mutants under the adverse effects of lifelong StealthBoy usage, her quicksilver-tongue Courier was quiet. 

They watched the sunset from the front porch rail.

“Don’t ask me how today went.” 

“Okay.”

Lily put the bighorners away and bellowed goodnight to them across the pens. 

Wary and hurt and wanting and wondering all at once, Six said ”Never thought about grandparents. I assume most people have them.” She was trying for breezy, but it was rawer than the wind coming off the mountain. 

“I don’t have any either,” Veronica said, trying for comfort. She tapped a knee against Six’s sprawled thigh, but she twitched away.

“It’s- it’s too cruel. I can’t keep reminding her that her grandchildren aren’t here.”

Veronica wanted, more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life, to hold her until she forgot about everyone else. She weighed the cost of a broken wrist against the trip back. Probably worth it if it was her off wrist, she decided.

“What if I have a cool grandma who misses me? I’d never know. No one came looking for me. It’s been  _ months _ .” Six’s voice finally cracked under the strain of the week.

Veronica leaned over so she could pat Six’s shoulder with her left hand, but Six ducked under and hopped off the porch rail. “Gonna go say goodnight to Rex.”

She told the door closing, “First bungalow in the row.” 

The intact guest bungalow outside the lodge was also not like New Vegas. No sleek organically curved coffee tables, no bloopy wallpaper, no artfully spiky mirrors or chandeliers. There was a  _ fireplace _ . There was some sort of antlered creature with only one head over the fireplace. There were huge, cozy cushions on a wood-framed couch. The beds were magnificent and rough-hewn. Veronica was in love. 

Six came back an hour later holding Rex’s current bandanna off the last Fiend he’d taken down, covered in little hand-printed skulls. She looked so cold and sad and pitiful that Veronica dragged her into bed and then got in behind her. 

“We don’t have enough scratchy wool blankets.” she told Veronica’s chest. 

She put a hand on Six’s side, feeling her ribs expand.

Six had been swinging wildly from clingy to closed off since she got back from the Fort, but this was something new, something demanding, constant checks to make sure Veronica was still there. If this small, prickly woman needed to be held while she worried about their dog, Veronica would blunt her prickles with body heat for as long as it took. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Veronica breathed, so light that Six maybe couldn’t hear it. It wasn’t really for Six anyway, it was for her. Barring some sudden and unspeakable act, she would follow Six wherever her trail led. This was something new, something interesting, something she hadn’t felt since her first girlfriend went missing in action a year ago. 

If anyone could find Christine, it would be Six, with House’s favor and House’s resources. Maybe then she could explain to her, to both of them- how she missed Christine so much, how she loved Christine so much, how every night where she didn't have to rearrange sharp elbows felt empty. How this Courier, jammed into her like she wanted to live inside her chest, took an entirely different piece of her heart.

* * *

“Is he still going to be Rex when he wakes up?” Six asked Calamity, failing to keep her voice even.

“Mostly, yes. All of his memories and training are in a chip under the brain, the brain itself is just wiring. Cheaper to control a nervous system with existing organic circuitry.” 

They were kicked out of the surgery ward and into the front room into a rip-roaring argument between Henry and Lily and Keene. 

It took less than thirty seconds for Six to pick a side and roar, fullthroated, at Henry “You will NOT experiment on Lily! She barely knows what day it is!” 

Veronica was disappointed but not surprised to learn that Henry had manipulated Lily into being a test subject for some sort of stealth field. She was even less surprised to learn an earlier form of the technology had caused “statistically insignificant mental stress” in the super mutant populace. 

Six pressed her emergency radio onto the super mutants. “He tries this shit again, you let me know and I’ll come up and kill him myself.”

Henry was almost apoplectic. “The loss of knowledge my death would represent-”

“No great loss,” Veronica said. “Your assistant’s already better than you are.” 

They spilled out into the front yard. 

Making Six jump, Lily said “My sweet pumpkin, it was so nice of you to get me a puppy!”

Six blinked slowly, watching Rey amble around the bighorner pen, saying hello to indifferent bighorner, tail slowly waving. “Of course, Grandma.” she said, like the word might shatter in her mouth.

She shoved back into the lodge two hours later. Henry, very pleased by Calamity’s success, bustled out from behind a curtain. “Such a productive day in spite of this morning, haven’t had one of these go so well since-” He checked himself.

“Oh, we know you were Enclave,” Six says casually. “Arcade sends his love.”

“Such an indiscreet young man.” he said, face tight.

Six walked right past him, ignoring his warnings about how they didn’t genuinely know if it was a success until Rex woke up, how he might go into a rage and take her nosy nose right off her face. 

Six sat down with her dog’s head in her lap, smoothing his ruff back down. He whined, trying to lift his head. “Hey buddy,” she whispered. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one billion thanks to tumblr user teacupnatasha for her three categories of comments: run-on sentence, which dog is this, and fuck you I'm sad. 
> 
> YES REX IS OKAY HE HAS A LONG AND HAPPY LIFE AFTER THIS AND CONTINUALLY SHOWS UP IN THE REST OF MY FIC
> 
> Title from [Franz Ferdianand’s Fresh Strawberries](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAbPx_-IJBI). 
> 
> Tchebysheff is a spelling variant of [Chebyshev’s theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chebyshev%27s_inequality), which (to oversimplify) does things with the center and spread of data points. I think I’m funny, and that’s all that matters. 
> 
> Dog meat is a consumable in all three of the modern Fallout games. I cannot imagine most people in overcrowded, underfed New Vegas right before the Second Battle for Hoover Dam were all that picky about their protein. 
> 
> Bullet the Wonder Dog was Roy Rogers’ and Dale Evans’ dog in real life and on TV.
> 
> Jacobstown has the only pinball machine in the game. I don’t know why this feels significant. 
> 
> I don't know how the biological mechanics of fixing Rex work and I am a physicist not a biologist so I have essentially slapped a bandaid over this underexplained bit of science. Giving Rex Lupa’s brain seems to be the “good” ending for him? Or at least the one with the least amount of adjustments necessary, according to his credits slide? 
> 
> This is not quite how Lily and Rex’s companion quest go- I have elided over some very tiresome fetch quests and simplified the super mutant conflict at Jacobstown bc otherwise this would essentially be a no-commentary playthrough of the missions.
> 
> Most of Calamity and Lily’s lines are lifted straight from the game. Doc Henry is not quite as ruthless as I’ve made him out here, but to get the better endings for Jacobstown in the endgame credit slides you do need to let him experiment on Lily. I have a lot of thoughts about the ethics of Lily as a companion, but those are going to have to wait for another day.


	3. begin again (in the night), (christine, aftermath)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is set in the Dead Money DLC. [The minute thirty-three intro is well worth your time.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A623juwR6A)  
> A brief synopsis: Ex-Brotherhood of Steel leader Elijah was searching for technology to eradicate the NCR. He repurposed slave bomb collars and linked radio relays to hold his chosen heist team hostage-one of them die, they all die in order to ensure cooperation. His team is: God, a super mutant; pre-War lounge singer and ghoul Dean Domino; Courier Six; and Brotherhood of Steel Knight Christine Royce, trapped in a robot surgery bay. Their target is a Vault below a casino, shut down until a grand opening ceremony is triggered. Completed just before the War by Frederick Sinclair, one of the greatest scientific minds of the time, it was meant to keep his muse Vera Keyes safe. The casino and surrounding walled vacation town lie somewhere in Baja California, covered in radioactive smog and surrounded by a new breed of ghoul.
> 
> Additional tags: aftermath of a hostage situation and a character dealing with medical abuse, fade to black comfort sex/holy shit we're alive sex, regular flavor hurt/comfort, a sprinkling of medical horror (no specific details), canon-typical violence, self-righteousness, battle couple, leaving a group that was very bad for you.

Hour one: Six’s plan wasn’t going to fucking work, but Christine didn’t have the energy to tell her no. The Courier- how the fuck did a Courier get roped into all this anyway? - even after thirty-six hours of nonstop running and gunning through the City of the Dead, still had _so_ many words at her disposal. 

The controlled rage that had fueled her almost to the coast after Elijah couldn’t be allowed to implode now. She still had a job to do. The best she could hope for was that Elijah killed Six quick and painless after she opened the Vault and deactivated the security under the casino instead of blowing her bomb collar, and that she could get one clean shot off when he came back up the elevator. His death was well worth hers.

Hour two: very near the top of the next hour, a small explosion rocked the building. She set herself up behind the shelter of the bar, where she could maybe nail him with one clean headshot before he could hit the transmitter, if it wasn’t on a dead-man switch, and then she waited for him to return or the small unlikely-and-likeable Courier to finish the job. 

Hour three: almost a quarter over. Christine tried to convince herself that a cramped, noisy elevator ride was different from an Auto-Doc; that arms wouldn’t drop out of the ceiling and start operating on her again. 

The elevator to Sinclair’s misbegotten vault went _ding!_ too cheerful, too ordinary a sound in this ruined splendor. 

Her voice was almost gone, eaten away by exhaustion and the toxic Cloud seeping through the Villa walls. “Christine! It’s me!” 

Christine didn’t answer. Elijah was perfectly capable of using her as a human shield. 

And then Courier Six of the Mojave Express limped out of the hallway past the bar, splashed with blood, dragging Elijah’s head. 

Christine couldn’t move. She was free. It was done. This small, tired woman, making her way into the main room, had freed her. She thought she rose up silently, but she must have made some sound because Six spun on a bottlecap, police pistol already out. “Hoover and _d_ _amn_ , you scared me!” 

Christine started shaking, tremors she couldn’t attribute to exhaustion or dehydration. She was too dehydrated to waste energy and water on tears anyway. She laid the holorifle carefully on the bartop, still within reach, before sitting back down curled up against a Nuka Cola machine.

Without the gun, and without the rage, she was nothing, a collection of scars and bruises and wounds where she’d failed. 

Her grandfather-in-actions’ head bounced into the barwell. 

Six came around the corner slowly, pistol away, hands wide, and sat with a deep sigh on the floor next to her. “You’re okay. I’m okay. I’m not going to lie and say you’re safe in this hellhole, but he can’t come back without a head, not even as a ghoul.” 

“Gory, but effective.” Christine sniffled, wiped her face on the jumpsuit sleeve that wasn’t covered in Ghost People ichor.

Six was still talking. “Shot a man in the heart once, he didn’t even notice. Just kept running until he collapsed a couple yards later. Even two to the head doesn’t do it sometimes.” 

It had been so, so long since Christine had been able to touch another human without wondering if she’d die in the next thirty seconds. She wanted to bury her face in Six’s shoulder, but the collar of broken skin and the literal bomb collar were in her way. She catalogued a huge scorch mark across the back of Six’s reinforced guard armor. It had certainly not been there when they had broken into the casino security office and Six had swapped out a dented shin guard.

“Collars. We can get the collars off.”

“Super mutant’s in the kitchen.”

“Domino?”

“Dead.” Six said, flat. 

Christine had no memory of how she pried through the circuitry, the super mutant waiting outside the walk-in freezer, ready to pull her out and slam the door if something went wrong. But she did it, and she got Six’s off, and she was able to talk Six through getting her own collar off. She believed in using in-situ resources and making it work, but there was no good way to extract a bomb collar from a super mutant’s stomach given her current tools, so they slammed the door on the collars and feasted. 

Around a mouthful of two hundred year old pasta, Six said, “We can all start over. There’s thirty-seven gold bars in the Vault. That’s at least two hundred thousand caps, split three ways.” 

Christine put her spork down. “I’m not leaving. Someone has to watch over this place, warn people away. No one can ever go through what we did again.”

Six squinted at her. “The toxic fog and the Ghost People won’t do that for you?”

“There’s too much tech here for its own good. People will keep coming here and dying. You saw that dead scavver in the police station- his maps were all the way from the Gull Coast.” 

“So we do one big sweep to get as many Ghost People as possible. We lock the front gates. We go on with our lives.”

“No. I can’t let this happen again.” 

“Okay, I hear you, you’re gonna sleep on it.”

“Courier-”

“Don’t you have to report back to the Brotherhood about Elijah? Feels like they’d want something this important in person. What’d he even do to deserve one of you on his tail?”

“Classified.” Six expectantly chewed BlamCo Deluxe mac and cheese waiting for more details. “He deserved the slowest death anyone could give him.” 

“Okay.” Six said, with breathtaking trust in her judgement. 

* * *

They cleaned up with an embarrassment of canned water. Christine left to find a better bed that Vera hadn’t died in while Six, tight-mouthed, used the Auto-Doc. She didn’t want to be anywhere near a working one, watch it fix Six’s neck where she’d clawed so hard around the bomb collar when she woke up that she left deep gouges in her own skin, red and irritated and starting to puff around the edges from the Cloud. They’d get infected if she left them any longer. 

Christine came back to find her in a bra and underwear. She tore her eyes away from where Six’s sturdy thighs met her ass to watch skin grow over the burn on her back as Six hissed. She was breathing hard, not quite hyperventilating but close to it. 

“Distract me.” she said, looking over her shoulder. 

Somewhere between twelve and twenty hours ago, they’d ended up jammed into a closet as more Ghost People than they cared to deal with passed. She’d been practically in Six’s lap, tense and stiff. Six had relaxed under her, putting a gauntlet between a tear in Christine’s assassin suit and the sharp edges of a storage cabinet. Physical touch seemed to ground her, and if they’d known each other better she’d probably have settled for quick arm and shoulder pats instead of the simple hand signals they flashed to each other- let me get behind you, on your left, boost me, watch my back. 

That brief moment in the switching station, where Six had held her battered hand in both of hers and promised to come back for her, that brief moment had been the first human contact Christine had had in months. 

Christine grabbed her hand, led her into a bedroom with fewer negative associations.

Six, hesitant, wrapped an arm around Christine’s shoulders, rested her forehead against Christine’s collarbone, and let out a long shuddering sigh, the last of the adrenaline shot she’d taken before the Vault finally leaving her. 

Christine traced the edge of the burn, shiny-pink-stark. “May I?” she purred, or tried to purr. Vera Keyes’ smoky old-world contralto wasn’t agreeing with the process of being reinserted into someone else’s body, and the Cloud wasn’t helping.

Six looked up at that with a startled little noise, burr-rough from the chemical tang everywhere. 

Christine kissed a scarred temple. 

Six made a hoarse little _oh_ , a sound that did not belong in the terrible hard adobe splendor of the Madre, and smirked up at her, “I’d love to test that new voice out, make you sing for me, but I might fall asleep as soon as I’m horizontal.” 

They kissed properly. Christine had the briefest thought that she kissed like Veronica, a sharp nip to get her mouth open in a gasp of surprise, then all demanding like she wanted everything, even the air in her lungs. She was too busy after that to have many more coherent thoughts. 

* * *

Six didn’t let her out of bed until well past noon, when they got hungry enough to wander downstairs again. 

She agreed to stay to clear out the Ghost People. Christine was secretly glad she wasn’t going to be immediately alone again, and started putting together a plan of attack just like Elijah had taught her. They found earbuds and gas masks, set off the fire alarm, and posted up on the roof. 

The Pip-Boy on Six’s wrist was deeply unhappy about Christine one-shotting the fusion core of a delivery truck crashed into the front gate, but the fireball took out enough Ghost People to be worth it. 

Kicking a severed arm out of the way of the front door, Six put a round into something’s burnt face. 

“Well,” she said, “let's go start a commotion.” 

Christine had never seen someone jauntily rack a shotgun before.

They did one big sweep through town, detouring to scavenge some demolition charges and collapse the hospital Christine had been trapped in. Even before she’d been a sniper, Christine had been of the opinion that shooting enemies at range was good practice, so they kept to the rooftops. Six was perfectly happy to chuck odd bits of furniture into the street and make as much racket as humanly possible while Christine took point. 

Six chucked a music stand into the street from a souvenir store’s portico, bouncing it off a fusebox. “Once this is done, everything that can move under its own power will be gone. Except for the roaches and the rats, and I’d like to think I’m a better conversationalist.” 

Christine, waiting for the holorifle to cool down, reloaded a brace of police pistols. “This will never be done. I can’t possibly kill every single Ghost Person. It would take years.”

Six threw a coffee mug into the street, managing to hit another Ghost Person in the back of the head through sheer luck. “You don’t have to kill every single one of ‘em. Don’t think they can live outside the Cloud, it’s got some kind of preserving effect.” 

“There’s too much technology trapped here. What if the NCR gets its hands on it? They’ll be unstoppable.” 

“But if the Brotherhood gets its hands on it, that’s okay?”

“Better to preserve it away from those who would misuse it.”

“But what stops _you_ from misusing it?”

“We’ve got a Code. We haven’t taken over the coast, we’re not constantly pushing east, we take care of our people and we don’t let them fend for themselves. We’re not an expanding nation-state overextending ourselves for military technology, and _we_ didn’t start the NCR-Brotherhood War.”

Six made an indecipherable little noise at that and chucked a coffee pot into the fire escape across the street. 

Christine had accepted this was a suicide mission two weeks out, not quite a year ago. She had buried the hope of ever seeing Veronica again with full honors. She _could_ see Veronica again, go partway with Six and find her way back, but she’d never truly know if Veronica was _safe_ , wouldn’t know if the NCR had found the tech in Sinclair’s Vault until the Brotherhood valley was a crater. Staying here was worth Veronica being safe. 

They ended up close to the main gates, Vera’s hologram keeping the Ghost People away.

“Can you write a message over the gates before you go? I don’t know when...if I’ll get writing back.” Christine rubbed the scar running over her ear, and Six rubbed her own in sympathy. 

“What do you want it to say? ‘No good loot, bad air, mean locals’?”

Christine sighed, and started to dictate, “This place is not a place of honor-”

* * *

The next morning, Christine woke up tangled and warm, a comforting weight on her collarbone where Six was plastered into her chest, dark hair nested up to her chin 

Her hair was still a fright, unhappy and frizzy from the Cloud. She’d refused to cut it last night, found a bottle of conditioner in Vera’s bathroom, a solid block of lipids. After drenching her whole head in it, they only had to trim a few horrible knots out, and the short bits vanished among the wavy mass anyway. Christine could not help running her hands through it, tucking her thumbs behind Six’s ears, kissing each scarred temple softly, the gash through her eyebrow from falling off a fire escape, old pocked spatter from not dodging a grenade fast enough. 

This morning, Christine moved Six’s hair out of her mouth, traced over the bubbly scar tissue on her temple. 

Six tipped up her wrist, kissed her palm. “Come home with me. Leave this hellhole behind.” Christine could feel her smile. “Like Vera says- begin again.” 

“I can’t. I _can’t_ leave all this to be used against the Brotherhood.”

Six rolled off her and stared at the terrible decaying popcorn ceiling, frowning. 

Christine didn’t want to see her frown. This woman saved her three times from death, gave her a number of much better little deaths. The least she could do was show her a better time before she left. A good memory to hold on to, as she patrolled the Villa and Six went wherever home was for her. 

* * *

“I’m not leaving. This argument is over.” Christine said, pouring Sugar Bombs into a bowl. 

Six stared at her from across the table, said “Huh,” and whacked her across the temple with a butter knife. 

Christine woke up handcuffed to a sledge Six and the super mutant were pulling. The blankets did not soften the gold bars enough.

Her mouth tasted like something died in it. 

She’d been out for a while. 

Six had knocked her out, and then _sedated her_ . “You _bitch_ ,” she managed to croak. 

Six looked over her shoulder, eyes dark and exhausted. “Blew the gates before we left. Couldn’t leave you there. No one cares if you’re a martyr if no one watches you die.”

Christine started cursing out Six’s ancestors. 

“Chris _t_ _ine_ , you big flirt.” 

* * *

Veronica had bits of fourteen different laser pistols spread out across the kitchen table, trying to cobble together one perfect laser pistol. She moved all the grips off her lap when she heard the elevator come up.

Six turned, Christine unconscious in a bridal carry. 

“Oh! I have a dress for you!” she whispered, voice rough but happy. 

Veronica dropped her multimeter. Reached out for Christine. 

“She’s okay, she’s okay! I think! I didn’t hurt her!” Six hissed, drawing back protectively. 

They put her in the master suite, in Veronica and Six’s bed.

Veronica was reduced to a series of verbs. Sit. Touch. Wait. 

Six leaned her tired head against Veronica’s shoulder, whispered “Wait, is this your ex?”

“Yes.” Touch. Wait.

“She’s uh- she’ll be really mad at me when she wakes up. Didn’t want to leave the hellhole I found her in. I’ll take a bedroom downstairs, you two should... catch up.”

Veronica nodded, still staring at Christine’s slack face, waiting. 

* * *

Six paused at the top of the penthouse stairs, staring down at a huge viewscreen.

A still image of a distinguished middle-aged man flickered up. “Courier. Have you determined what the idiots at Nellis are worth?”  
“I’ve been busy, House, okay? Did you know Vera Keyes?”

“One of Sinclair’s girls, the last one. He built some pleasure town out in the middle of nowhere for her. Something there is interfering with communications, I’ve pinged his casino every so often.”

A sharp, hollow laugh escaped her. “Something sure fucking is.”

* * *

Christine, in full dress uniform, told a very abbreviated story of Elijah’s death to Elder McNamara. Left out the Villa and the Madre entirely. If the Brotherhood couldn’t have the tech, no one could. She told them he went feral, she took one clean headshot, and buried him with full honors. His research was locked in an uncrackable workshop, so she buried the bunker it was in.

Six, as the only other witness to his death, added, “What she didn’t tell you was it half a mile away. A shot to die for, you must be very proud.”

McNamara frowned at Six before turning back to Christine. “Based on your report, we find that you may be immediately promoted to the rank of senior knight.”

Six, watching Christine and not the politely applauding room, saw her face stay in a calm mask and her weight shift back. 

Veronica looked furious. “She should make Paladin for this at _least_ ,” she hissed to Christine’s mother.

Kathleen Royce was whiteknuckling her armrest, same sharp jawline clenched as hard as Christine’s. 

Christine said, as if this was an ordinary polite conversation, “Based on my contributions to the Order’s internal affairs as well as not allowing additional weapons technology to fall into the NCR’s hands, I request a family suite in the secondary bunker.”

McNamara blinked at her for a moment. “That honor is reserved for Paladins and those who are contributing to the future generations of the Brotherhood. Have your...emotions on that subject changed?”

“If my services are, as you have just said, _so_ valuable and lauded, it’s the least I fucking deserve.” 

“You cannot be in a relationship that does not result in children. This is the Code.”

Something died behind Christine’s eyes. “Effective immediately, I renounce the title of Senior Knight of the Brotherhood of Steel and my position in the Circle of Steel.”

Kathleen Royce looked like she’d been shot, Six perked all the way up, and Veronica said, “You can take my Scribe patch when I leave.” 

“You have taken an _oath._ Members of this Brotherhood don’t resign, they die in the field. I do _not_ accept your resignation. Effective immediately, both of you are demoted to Squire status and under arrest for your egregious violations of the Code!” 

Six didn’t move, feet up on the railing, arms crossed, picture of comfort as everyone started shouting. She interrupted, her third favorite activity. “McNamara, do you listen to Radio New Vegas?”

McNamara had briefly forgotten Six existed, the worst tactical error of his life. “I find the selection repetitive.”

“So does the NCR, but I know they have someone listening constantly, just in case I do something dumb like send out coded messages.

“If you don’t let them walk out of here safe and sound, _I_ don’t go. And if _I_ don’t go, a special news report detailing _exactly_ where both your bunkers are, as well as information about your chaff systems and regular patrol hours, goes out on public radio. It’s set to pop off in, oh, wow, about twenty minutes, really did take you longer than I thought to effectively debrief someone.”

They were spit back out onto the valley sixteen minutes later, just enough time for Christine and Veronica to stuff a duffle bag and tell Christine’s mother goodbye. 

Once they were through the pass to Black Mountain, Six poked at something on her Pip-Boy and waved at one of the ghouls that took over the comms station after Tabitha’s departure. 

“You _were_ planning on releasing that information?” Christine asked. 

“There are children living there!” Veronica yelled, voice cracking off the canyon walls. 

“My mother lives there.” Christine said, cold and quiet. 

Six sighed. “I’m not going to apologize for enjoying being alive and seeing both of you alive, and I fucking hate the Brotherhood. I would say present company excepted, except, well.” 

They made it to the Freeside gates with no further conversation. When Six kept going east, Veronica said “Hey,” softly while Christine paused halfway over the threshold. 

Six turned back, fake grin at the ready. “Got a job with a caravan going north, they want to see how close they can get to Salt Lake and what’s left. Your gold's in the bar upstairs. You can-” she waved between them- “figure yourselves out without me complicating it. There’s a suite at the Tops if House bugs you too much. Besides, I need a vacation.” 

They watched her walk away from the sunset until she was swallowed up by the brush. She didn’t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yet again one billion thanks to tumblr user @teacupnatasha for reading through this and yelling at me
> 
> Title from the in-universe song by Vera Keyes.
> 
> Did the lore dump in the front author’s note help or not? This series is a little more reliant on in-game knowledge than the main fic, and I’m doing my best to explain things in-universe and have a beta who hasn’t played the game, but thoughts & opinions would be helpful. 
> 
> I know the intro shows you a shot of the Grand Canyon first, but the Sierra Madre Casino feels so like a rich person Baja California vacation town.
> 
> “Shot a man in the heart once, he didn’t even notice. Just kept running until he collapsed a couple yards later.” This is another line that took two hours to research. There is some anecdotal evidence that with a small caliber and low speed (possibly from a ricochet) a bullet to the heart is survivable. 
> 
> two hundred thousand caps- an INCREDIBLY oblique The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly reference. Six can’t do math- the in-universe value of all thirty-seven gold bars is closer to four hundred thousand caps. 
> 
> Gull Coast- the legend of the Madre has spread pretty far, and given Kellogg in Fallout 4 has traveled from old San Francisco all the way to Boston, it seems reasonable an enterprising outfit out of pre-War Houston has rustled up the resources to come check it out. One of my favorite things in post-apoc fiction is places named after half-gone signs, like Eden or Novac or Far Harbor.
> 
> adrenaline shot- in hardcore mode you have to make sure your sleep meter doesn’t fill up or you die. There’s nowhere safe to sleep in this DLC before you open the casino, but you can get adrenaline shots from a couple Auto-Docs scattered around to lower your sleep meter. 
> 
> Start a commotion- I was specifically thinking about  this song when I wrote this line 
> 
> [This place is not a place of honor.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-time_nuclear_waste_warning_messages)
> 
> I don’t know when...if I’ll get writing back- In a previous DLC, Old World Blues, Christine went through experimental brain surgery that removed her ability to read and write. She did not consent to this. 
> 
> Kathleen Royce- in-game, Veronica mentions something about Christine’s parents disapproving of their relationship. Dads are useless, so I’m assuming he died somewhere between Veronica and Six breaking up and Christine leaving to hunt Elijah down. I was thinking about Kathleen O’Hara as a potential face claim for Christine, but I like it as a name for her mom. 
> 
> Tabitha’s departure- more about this in Raul’s chapter. Black Mountain used to have a radio station run by a super mutant offshoot of the Jacobstown group. There is a way to persuade them to leave peacefully and stop terrorizing nearby towns.


	4. indifference and disinterest in what the critics say

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cass goes on local public radio and talks about moonshine. 
> 
> “I’ve heard rumors you taught Courier Six herself this recipe. You met her pretty early in her reign, didn’t you? After she murdered Benny in a fit of vendetta, but before Mr House’s untimely death?”  
> “I guess? I don’t keep track of rumors- was pretty busy around the time House died.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part of this one takes place directly before and after the Old World Blues DLC- the premise of this one is that you go to a satellite crashed into a drive-in movie theater at midnight and it teleports you into basically a pulpy fifties scifi novel about the dangers of science without ethics and obsession with the past. Six acquired the same lobotomy scars as Christine here. There is a significant amount of body horror in this DLC. 
> 
> This fic also dovetails with the beginning of the first fic I ever wrote for this fandom and the first in the series this fic is part of, “odd diversity of misery and joy”. That was the first thing I wrote in years and I also had the flu, please keep your expectations low. The main point of that fic was introducing Blondie & Angel Eyes from The Good, The Bad, and They Ugly into Fallout by going “they were mercs House hired to tail Six”.

“Welcome back to 88.9, KNPR Weekend Edition Sunday with Adelaide Shirazi-Borisov. Go take a look at your booze right now. Make sure it’s all still there and in the correct amounts. Really  _ look  _ at the bottles. Got any pre-War ones? Wonder what was in them originally? Rose of Sharon Cassidy, of Cassidy Caravans, is here to tell us and share her family’s moonshine recipe.” 

“It’s just Cass, and um, yeah, hi. Usually I’m not looking at the bottles too hard when I’m drinking, but it’s a fun party trick. Always nice to be able to spot one of those old glass bleach bottles and steer clear of whatever’s inside.”

“ _ Most _ people don’t think too hard about what used to be in their containers, I imagine.”

“Sure! I mean, common sense not to eat out of a rusty can or a jar of preserves where the lid’s bulging funny. It’s easier than you'd think to poison yourself by not cleaning out a bottle good enough. Besides, what else are you going do with an empty bottle? Wait for it to refill itself?” 

“So how do you know what used to be in a bottle?” 

“If it’s a big clear bottle with a long neck, probably used to hold wine or gin. There were a lot of specialty fruit growers in the NCR, before the droughts. Those are still good for gin, easy to pour. Absinthe’s got a shorter neck, you don’t want  _ that _ to pour too easy, too much of that shit’ll knock you cold.”

Adelaide made an encouraging hmm, possibly remembering her own run-in with the Green Fairy. 

Cass continued. “Whiskey and tequila bottles are those little clear glass ones all over the place. Can be hard to tell apart- tequila’s usually got more of a rounded shoulder. Some labels spell whiskey without the “e”. Dunno what the difference was to pre-War folks.

“Those tiny ones with the plastic caps aren’t very useful, unless you’re giving samples away to bars or something. Even then, it’s hard to get a good taste out of one shot.

“You can’t get enough of a reaction going in a beer bottle, everyone knows what those look like, right? Easier to make a big batch of something and then divvy it up into beer bottles, if you gotta.

“ _ Big _ brown bottles are either vodka or bleach. Unless you boil the shit out of the bleach ones a couple times, , the big rounded off ones that have ABRAXO stamped on the bottom, use ‘em for target practice. Those tall brown vodka bottles never sit in my hand right- they’re all corners.” 

“Thank you for such a thorough breakdown! While we give everyone a minute to get their pencils ready for that recipe, let me ask you- you started out as a water trader, right? When did you make the switch to trading alcohol?”

“Well, I’m getting back into the water business. NCR brought their own supply lines, weren’t very good at protecting the roads, and when everybody flocked back to New Vegas before the Dam, water trading kinda dried up, ha. But everyone likes booze, specially bored soldiers.” 

“I’ve heard rumors you taught Courier Six herself this recipe. You met her pretty early in her reign, didn’t you? After she murdered Benny in a fit of vendetta, but before Mr House’s untimely death?”

“I guess? I don’t keep track of rumors- was pretty busy around the time House died.” 

* * *

Cass finally looked up from the Mojave Outpost bartop to the women and their floaty robot. She had in fact seen the satellite crash, but there was almost certainly no booze there. “You got quite a parade going already.”

“Keeps the geckos off.” Veronica said, very seriously.

“And the ants.” said Christine. 

“Very dangerous, those ants.” said Six.

In retrospect, Cass should not have been surprised by the lesbianism. This Courier, like most Couriers, was at the peak of physical fitness, could charm her way into or out of anything, and was smart enough to navigate halfway across the Mojave on the rumor of a big crashed satellite for her girlfriends? partners? Cass didn’t know what the protocol for more than one was here, but they all seemed happy if a little too interested in pre-War shit. 

* * *

“Ready for that recipe, listeners? Go ahead, Miss Cassidy.”

“Call me Cass, Miss Cassidy was my mama. Anyway, for a good sized jug you want one part maize to two parts mutfruit, and enough yeast to start a new sourdough. You don’t have sugar root, you can throw in a spoonful of the juice inside a fission battery to get things going. Do NOT use a metal spoon. And if you don’t have any of these things, or you can’t find a good bottle, flag down the next Cassidy Caravan you see and we’ll help you out.” 

“Fission battery acid?” Adelaide looked a little pale, leaned back from her mike. 

“Yeah, but not too much, or that shit’ll kill you dead. Enough to cover the bottom of a wooden spoon. It helps cook whatever you’re fermenting faster- those pre-War folks really knew how to use an atom.”

* * *

“Could yank the battery out of the robot, get some moonshine going,” she’d said, eyeing the eerie hovering thing. 

They had yelled at her, all immediately and irreversibly in love with the thing they’d salvaged earlier yesterday. Primm, they said. She hadn’t thought there was anything good in Primm, except the working fridge in the Vikki and Vance Casino. 

There had not, as Cass suspected, been any drinkable alcohol at the crash site, just a lonely bottle of beer gone sour from sitting in the sun. There were an abundance of empty whiskey bottles. Good thing she’d planned ahead and brought enough booze from the Outpost and the moonshine fermenting under her bunk to get all four of them shitfaced. 

She did not want to fall asleep near the big creepy satellite blinking frantically, or really be anywhere near it, but a job was a job and caps were caps. Veronica shared her concerns.

Watching the trio interact was more interesting than Cass wanted to admit. She couldn’t figure out how their relationship worked, or why it worked. Six had just gotten back from a long trip north trying to get to Salt Lake City, and they all seemed to be figuring out where they stood with each other again.

Sometime around midnight, drunker than a gecko in mutfruit season, Six stumbled over to the satellite. “Babe, look, it’s fine-” she said to Veronica, kicked at it, and then vanished in a shower of sparks, like a firework on Founders’ Day.

* * *

“I’m sure drinking this must bring back a lot of memories for you.”

“That’s for sure.” 

* * *

Cass hadn’t had her own moonshine since that night. While she was stuck in a loop of horrified running through her process to figure out if this batch was tainted, Veronica and Christine had taken five minutes to leave supplies and an extra radio tucked under a wing of the horrible thing that had stolen Six. They both agreed there were more resources in New Vegas to figure out what the fuck had happened, broke camp, and made it to the Nipton ruins in two hours, where Cass finally persuaded them that running around the Mojave tipsy with no moon would not help Six. 

* * *

“Any fun specific drinking stories you’d like to share? Maybe some with our Courier? A little roadrunner told me she’s expanding.”

“She’s got a stake in establishing new supply lines now that Crimson Caravan’s dickery is over, but I think most people want new trade routes now that they’re moving back out from New Vegas again.”

“Interesting how you’re the only big caravan company in the Mojave now they’re gone,  _ and _ you’re a close personal friend of the Courier,  _ and _ she’s lent you a five-figure sum of caps for a new brahmin herd.”

“What? Who told you that?”

“Is all her money from House’s fabulous wealth, or does she have other sources? Is she running money through Cassidy Caravans and the NCR?” 

* * *

“Where’s Victor?” hissed Christine. She had not put her rifle away the whole run back up Highway 95. They’d hauled ass, getting from one end of the Mojave to the other in two and a half days. Cass hadn’t moved that fast in a long while. They hadn’t had time to drink and be sad/horrified/confused. Veronica and Christine had taken five minutes to leave supplies and an extra radio tucked under a wing of the horrible thing that had stolen Six, agreed there were more resources in New Vegas to figure out what the fuck had happened, broke camp, and made it to Nipton in two hours, where Cass finally persuaded them that running around the Mojave tipsy with no moon would not help Six. 

A carpeted-over hatch in the middle of the floor was open, two small-caliber bullets in the cover, a blood trail leading back to a maintenance door propped open with a broken slot machine. 

Courier Six, looking smaller and frailer, covered in blood, almost blinded them all with the light off her Pip-Boy, saying to someone behind her “Well, I don’t  _ know _ why the power’s still out, why would  _ those  _ two things ever be connected- oh!”

Veronica and Christine, looked like they wanted to rush forward and hug her, but they were covered in radioactive dust and she was covered in blood, so they all sort of stalled and stared at each other.

Six took a deep breath. “Okay. So. Uh, a lotta shit happened in the past- fuck- I dunno, three days?”

“Two and a half.” Veronica said.

Six gestured to herself. “Not my blood, which is the thing most people were distressed about I think, House is dead, everything else can wait until later. Power’s out. Am I missing anything?” she asked one of the men behind her. He shrugged at her. “Oh! This is Blondie and Angel. They work for us now.”  
“Now.” said Christine, sizing them up, rifle still up.

Some of the more respectable mercs, Cass thought. They’d come through the Outpost once, like they were looking for something. Stayed long enough for a polite drink and to resupply, and booked it back down the mountain. 

Six slumped against the doorframe, pushing her bangs back out the way.“Okay, if we’re going to have a  _ talk _ about it can we all sit down? Or get the power back on so we can sit and have a drink and a civilized discussion? Rex is stuck upstairs until we get the power back, he won’t go down the stairs.” 

“Your face..” Christine said softly. 

Six’s face did something only Veronica and Christine could interpret. “Yeah. We match now. Found your silencer, it’s upstairs.”

Christine’s face did something only Veronica and Six could interpret. 

Six added, "Well, here's an upside. We have all of House's shit now and he can't yell at me any more." 

* * *

The ham radio set next to the broadcasting equipment beeped at Adelaide. “Oh! Looks like we’ve got a caller, perhaps with a question about your recipe or an opinion about our benevolent Courier?”

“Adelaide,” Six purred, crackly. “Long time listener, first time caller. You want a first hand interview, you know where to find me. Stop harassing the woman and let her get back to the legitimate business of not gossiping about people on the radio.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from the Panic! at the Disco song London Beckoned Songs About Money Written By Machines. There’s no good reason for a debut album to go this hard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc3sml-EOs4
> 
> Adelaide’s name comes from a NPR name generator. 
> 
> Fallout liquor bottles don’t really track 1:1 with real-world liquor bottles- there just aren’t that many bottle models. There’s no gin in-game, but the games differentiate scotch and whisky and whiskey. I can’t be bothered, and I don’t think the distinction would survive the bombs. Somewhere in a storage unit is a giant brown Clorox bottle that has a really interesting iridescent bloom over the inside. I’ve never taken the stopper out, out of fear. 
> 
> One of the first quests you can do in this game is kill like. eight big ants to clear the road between the Mojave Outpost and the valley below. It is not terribly difficult. 
> 
> There’s no reason for sugar cane production to exist in New California, but sugar BEETS are much more forgiving. 
> 
> Putting battery acid in moonshine speeds up the fermentation process. Please don’t do this. 
> 
> Pre-Second Battle of Hoover Dam, I think a lot of people flocked to New Vegas for protection- a lot of the towns got hit by the Legion or enterprising raider groups. Now that the Legion and most of the raider groups are well on their way to extinct, I think people are starting to move out again, especially with how crowded the city got with refugees. There are several sidequests about how irritated the local/long-time residents of New Vegas are with the “squatters”. 
> 
> Victor is the cowboy robot who staffs the front door and elevator of the Lucky 38 while House is alive. 
> 
> Sorry this isn’t the post- Honest Hearts post-Christine chapter reunion everyone is yelling at me about :( I too would like to read them having a sensible adult conversation about the state of their relationship once Six gets back from swanning off to the wilderness to be melodramatic and kill some Legion but I find poly negotiations in real life fucking exhausting so I’m not sure how I would write that conversation in an interesting way. Mostly, I don’t want to fuck it up so I’m not going to touch it.


	5. are there ghosts in your chest? (improvised weapons, raul)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Courier Six has been awake for less than a week and she's already made a new friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rated G. Additional tags: Howard Hughes blues, toasters, grief, radio, friendly banter.

Six bounced over a steamer trunk, pivoting on one wrist. “Where in the _good fuck_ is that _fucking_ magazine?” 

“As opposed to a bad fuck?” Christine heaved a minigun out of the narrow aisle and back under a table. 

“You wouldn’t know it from me, babe.” Six said, looking like a deranged patron saint of hunting rifles. 

“You know, boss, I’d say this armory is heaven, but you’re here.” Raul said. 

“Still as rude as the day we met, eh?”

* * *

Six months earlier, a woman who looked like his sister unlocked the door, and his heart jumped into his throat and stayed there. _“¿Quién eres?_ ” 

She cocked her head, answered slow, like the word was bubbling up. _“La mensajera._ ” She hissed, rubbed her temples, made a face to hide a wince. “Didn’t know I knew that. You wanna get out of here? No, wait, can you fix this?” She slid a plasma defender held together with optimism and a leather hair tie across the table. 

“Sure. I'd be happy to prolong my captivity and psychological abuse to tighten some lug nuts for you.” As if he’d ever have a real job again. He couldn’t imagine this woman had the resources to keep a mechanic on retainer. 

“Miguel?” she said, leaning over to read the nametag on his jumpsuit. 

“Name's Raul. Raul Alfonso Tejada. I'm the mechanic around here.”

“Then why’s your jumpsuit say Miguel?”

“Probably because it used to be Miguel’s.”

In better light, of course it wasn’t his sister. She’d been dead and avenged for so, so long. Her nose was different, the scar across her chin was different, but the hair. _V álgame D ios ,_ the same wild dark wavy mass as Rafaela and Claudia and all the other women he’d failed to protect. Claudia had bangs, but this courier had heavier, choppier bangs hiding shaved bits over her temples. He felt as if he’d somehow failed this woman already when he saw the fresh pink scars from temple to jaw on both sides of her face. 

He popped the plasma defender’s grip open. This needed a stronger electromagnet than in any of the toasters to have a good kick to it, but he could at least keep it closed better than a leather hair tie. Do something to repay popping the lock on the door. 

“How old are you? Have you been here since the War?”

“Boss, usually when somebody gives you a name and nothing else, it's because that's all they want to give you.”

She nodded, like this was a fair point in a reasonable discussion, sat down where she could see the door, and told him all about how she’d been shot, a real kick in the head. She asked after a daisy-suited rat bastard who’d stolen a package, and how to get to New Vegas from here. Took some belated Rad-X while he pulled parts from a hot plate, a Nuka-Cola toy truck, a Graflex camera housing for a new barrel. He didn’t have a working oscilloscope to calibrate it, but at least it looked more like a plasma defender and less like a janky gun-shaped pile of scrap. He also didn’t particularly want it test fired anywhere near him, but she seemed pleased with the heft of it. 

Grief whacked him across the chest again when they left his cell, the sunset lighting up the same warm undertones in her hair. 

Like Rafaela, she listened, very politely, very attentively, to his concerns about staying on the mountain after they dealt with Tabitha. She then did what he suspected she was going to do anyway, which was thoroughly loot the place. 

“Glad I’ll never be dragged in here again,” he muttered as she rifled through Tabitha’s storage locker. 

“What?” 

“You didn’t hear me on the radio, very subtly calling for help and rescue?”

She looked blank.

“You’ve got a Pip-Boy! That thing can pick up signals halfway across the desert! You’re telling me you stumbled across this place by sheer accident?” 

“It’s a big building with a big dish on the top. A _lot_ of big dishes on top of a big mountain surrounded by patrolling super mutants. It’s not exactly secretive. What do you mean, this thing can pick up radio?”

He tuned in to Radio New Vegas, anything but the torturous talk show he’d been a part of. She looted the rest of the building humming along, badly, to Big Iron. 

“You think the concrete’s enough to keep out the worst of the rads?” she asked, kicking at a fold-down army cot. 

“Radiation turned _me_ into a handsome devil, but if you want to roll those dice it’s your call.”

She dry-swallowed more Rad-X, said “It’ll probably be fine,” and turned down the covers. “You want to go back to your cozy little cell or take the one downstairs?” 

He grumped at her about his arthritis and took the cot downstairs. 

* * *

In the morning, she loaded him like a pack brahmin. She took just as much, managing to cram all of Tabitha’s arsenal into their packs.

“Already months late, and now I don’t even know if this’ll be enough caps to get into the Strip.”

“What’s a girl like you going to a place like that for?”

She strapped a machete to her thigh, looking a little pale. Maybe just because she’d been in a coma for months. “The package I was supposed to deliver was for a Mr House.”

“ _The_ Mr House?”  
“Do you know him? Does he seem like the kind of guy to shoot a messenger?”

“Let me tell you a story from before the Great War: Everybody knew Robert House. He was a genius. A superstar. Founded RobCo at twenty-two, dated Hollywood starlets, the works. They say he saved Las Vegas. I was in Mexico City when the bombs dropped. Even from there, we could see House's defensive rockets shooting down the incoming missiles. Everybody assumed he died in the War. Maybe he did. But his robots are still out there, roaming the Wastes. And now, a Mr House rules New Vegas.”

“It can’t be the same Mr House. Man like that would have more ambition than to just sit there.” 

“Maybe not. Maybe the new guy is just a clever raider chief with a knowledge of history. Maybe he just left instructions for his robots to carry out in his name. Or maybe Robert House uploaded his brain pattern into a computer and rules to this day, a godless, soulless machine-god!” He passed his pack down the boulder to her and flung his arms up to the sky. 

She looked up at him from underneath his pack, worried. His decrepit big-brother instincts started reactivating, painful as nerves repairing. ”Or maybe the whole thing's a crazy coincidence. Who knows?”

“I don’t really care who he is, as long as he’s fine with a delay considerably over the Express delivery guarantee.” 

“I remember there were some weird stories about him, especially near the end. There was a tell-all in _El Periodico de las Aburridas_ by a starlet House dated. She said they never, um…”

She sighed. “We’re both grownups, Raul.” 

“She said all he wanted to do was scan her brain and make her dress up in different outfits.”

“Well. Everybody’s got a vice.” 

“It was quite the scandal, at least in the Latin-American tabloid journalism market.”

She didn’t talk for a full switchback down the road, the longest he’d heard her quiet. Her Pip-Boy squealed, and he could feel the rads buzzing in his teeth. 

“Something wrong?”

“I still can’t remember if I left anyone back in the NCR or not. Left a note at Goodsprings saying where I was headed, just in case, but…” She tapped her Pip-Boy. “Like the man on the radio says- Mojave, mo’ problems.” 

* * *

His frame of reference was months of sitting in a cell, occasionally getting hauled out to be a coerced guest on a talk show from hell, but Raul had a very eventful week. Six didn’t listen to him or the Pip-Boy, cut right through a hot spot in order to get to the 188 trading post faster, almost passed out, got ambushed by the Legion, ruined her bulletproof vest, and had a full-blown case of radiation poisoning by the time they reached the Freeside gates. 

She’d picked up another lost soul along the way, a cheerful woman with a power fist. They waited a full day for her to wake up in the Followers’ clinic, Veronica picking grit out of valves and Raul overhauling Six’s shotgun. 

The doc, a flustered blond with willpower to match Six’s, didn’t let her leave for three days until she could walk to the end of the courtyard without wobbling. 

It took a day to get past the Securitrons at the Strip’s gates, a long and boring day where the girls parked him in a bar and ran around getting forged credit checks to enter the Strip. They’d sold Tabitha’s arsenal for a pretty bag of caps, but Six seemed to think shotgun shells could be picked up for free from the ground. Rad-Away and reliable food in New Vegas didn’t come cheap either.

“You really didn’t have to come. I’m sure you’ve got much more important mechanic things to do.” she said to him, not watching the dancing girls outside Gomorrah. 

“The Mojave isn’t kind to girls that look like you.” he said. It wasn’t kind to Rafaela. It wasn’t kind to Claudia. It hadn’t been kind to this woman who didn’t remember her own name. It wasn’t kind to him either, but at least he’d been able to protect her a little better. 

She looked up at him, sunset catching the scar on her temple. “I am aware.” she said, and started walking up the Strip. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from the song Head On (Hold On To Your Heart) by Man Man. This is a very Courier Six song, I feel. I’m sort of torn on which in-game ending is the best ending for Raul, but both of them involve coming to terms with something. 
> 
> Six is riffing off a line Mr New Vegas says between songs, “The women of New Vegas ask me a lot if there's a Mrs. New Vegas. Well, of course there is. You're her. And you're still as perfect as the day we met."
> 
> “¿Quién eres?” - Who are you?  
> “La mensajera.”- The courier. 
> 
> You can get a really nice energy weapon pretty early in the game if you’re curious enough to go check out a partially collapsed railway bridge. It’s not in great condition. 
> 
> Válgame Dios- literally, “protect me God”; figuratively, an interjection.
> 
> I cannot imagine Six as someone patient enough to sit there, make sure she has a full stomach, and individually swallow pills with purified water. Woman’s got things to do. 
> 
> Bits and pieces of a Graflex camera were used for Luke’s lightsaber in Star Wars: A New Hope. It’s got SUCH a pleasing shape. 
> 
> Almost all of Raul’s dialogue is direct from the game. There are some rumors about House in Goodsprings/Primm/the Outpost, but my Courier is impatient and took the dangerous route up to New Vegas instead of the long way around, so this is the first time she’s really hearing a lot about her employer. 
> 
> Mojave, mo’ problems- also an in-game line if you take the Wild Wasteland perk. I do not know why you would NOT take this perk bc it adds a lot of silly nonsense, which is the main reason I play video games. 
> 
> This is not how radiation poisoning works in real life. Don’t get radiation poisoning in real life. Just say no. Don’t give in to peer pressure.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The main feature of Novac is a sniper nest in a giant dinosaur statue. The dinosaur’s name is Dinky. Revenge is had, in the form of a missile launcher.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional tags: fridged wife, the heterosexuals at it again, gleeful murder of Legion, shoulder-mounted missile launcher, dogs.

The victim of a failed doubletap drifted into Novac in the detached way gunslingers did- although, were you classified as a gunslinger anymore if you carried a missile launcher? She made the rounds into the hotel, up into the sniper nest to talk to Manny, out into the shelter of the Petro-Chico overhang to talk to the traders, ambling down the one street to chat to No-Bark and the doc, finally ending up next to him at the dinner table, like it was chance that blew her there. 

She turned to him over dinner, after she put away three steaks. This was it. They’d finally come after him for Bitter Springs, sent this bounty killer to drag him back to McCarran for a court martial. Death or reenlistment, most like. 

“Courier Six. Hear you’re the man to talk to about Legion movements,” she said, and offered to split a bottle of whiskey. 

“I have the night shift. You want to talk to Manny.”

“Already did.”

* * *

“Well, straight boys are dumb. Have you just...come out and told him?”

“His wife just died.” 

“Mmmmm. Makes the offer of comfort sex a more delicate proposition than it could be, huh.” She patted him on the shoulder. “Well, you seem like a smart boy. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” 

* * *

“There’s a slave camp at Cottonwood Cove. That’s one of their main landing sites from the Fort across the river.”

“Any info on the layout and fortifications?”

“You planning on making a suicide run?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Stay away from Searchlight too. Dirty bomb- full of ghouls.” 

She left at first light, without the missile launcher, headed south. 

Midday, a low concussive  _ whump _ shook Novac from across the river. Boone, woken up, gave Six several moments of silence in appreciation for what sounded like taking a lot of them out with her. 

Six returned before dinner, furious and dragging an equally furious dog. She stuffed the dog in her room and retrieved the missile launcher. 

“Hey. You wanna to go fucking _ murder  _ some assholes?” she asked. 

He hesitated. Worth a shot.

She groaned, shrugged the missile launcher off and leaned it against one of Dinky’s teeth. “What do you want me to do?”

“ My wife's dead. I want the son of a bitch who sold her. ” He told her the story in as few words as possible - how his pregnant wife had vanished, how nobody in town did anything, how he had a shortlist of suspicions. He shoved aside her questions about how he knew the Legion was involved and how he knew she was dead. 

Forty minutes later she walked in front of the dinosaur with Jeannie May, chattering about the sunset. He was disappointed but not surprised. His shot toppled her over the overpass railing. 

Six silently handed him a receipt for his wife and child, signed by Jeannie May and a Consul Crassus. 

“ I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It'd be like them to keep paperwork.”

“Let’s go.” she said. 

To avoid thinking about this any more, he did. 

They posted up at his old blind overlooking the cove, and he watched Six make several connections in her head before saying, very quietly, “I’m sorry.” 

She stood up with the missile launcher, silhouetted against the sunset, what was she  _ doing _ \- 

and the little watchtower where the commanding officer probably slept vanished in a little mushroom cloud. The Pip-Boy on her wrist started ticking, not urgently, just letting her know there was a higher than usual level of background radiation. Some of the foot soldiers were twitching in their tents. The officers’ bunkhouse door across from the dock opened, and they scrambled out, weapons drawn, fell to their knees and toppled into the Colorado. 

This was fast, cold, clinical, and surprisingly bloodless. Not like  _ he _ regularly got actual blood on his hands, but someone who carried a shotgun and a machete and a number of hidden pistols and knives seemed like she would usually be a little more hands-on. 

She left a big flashy note painted across the road, XOXO 6.

“Well. That takes care of revenge for Searchlight and your wife, I think. You think that’ll keep the pressure off Novac?”

He shrugged at her. He didn’t care. 

She wiped her new machete off on her calf. “Come up to Vegas. Probably be a little hot for you here, and I could use a spotter.”

“A spotter or a dog wrangler?” 

“I most empathetically do not need enough dogs that I need a whole separate entire person to wrangle them. My...girlfriend? or the person I’d _like_ to be my girlfriend- hey, if you’re not fine with that, we can go our separate ways. I know the NCR’s got some... ideas about the right kinds of partners.” 

“Fine by me.”

Some of the tension drained out of her shoulders. “ _ She _ likes dogs. She has a dog that needs a new brain.”

Boone didn’t even attempt to parse that one out. He just said “Scrap dealer’s up the road breeds dogs, if you need more options.”

She brightened a little bit, and they didn’t quite walk off into the sunset, since west was the wrong way, but they didn’t walk away from it either. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from Orville Peck’s Big Sky. The title was almost “On the field I remember you were incredible” from The Killers’ Andy You’re A Star, and there is a Ranger Andy who is an incredibly sweet man in Novac, but I liked how this one fit Manny and Boone. 
> 
> If you’re a male Courier with the Confirmed Bachelor perk, Manny is one of the people you can sweettalk to get info on where the rat bastard who shot you in the head went. 
> 
> The closest real-world equivalent to the Fat Man in-game is the smoothbore tripod Davy Crockett Weapon System, didn’t see active use. I’m going to plug one of my big sources of primary sources/one of my favorite grad students, @NuclearAnthro on twitter.


	7. weapon of choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wherein Courier Six tries to fix the price of salt. Additional tags: canon-typical violence, flirting through violence, salt trade, bodice ripping, capitalism, not the mob but not NOT the mob?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point in my timeline, Six and Veronica and Christine are all together. The 188 trading post is an overpass with a pair of surviving onramps in a strategically important position near New Vegas.

“If the Salt City people aren’t here by two AM we get to go home, that’s the rules. Aw, this is where we met!” Courier Six leaned over the overpass rail, staring down into the lanterns on the 188 Trading Post’s ground level. 

“Wasn’t it on the other side?” Veronica rested her chin on the top of her wife’s head. It was a little too hot to be this close, but the way Six relaxed into her was worth it. 

“Nope. The sunset was behind you, you looked all sad and mysterious and hot.” 

“I was trying to lie low.”

“With a Power Fist?” Six twisted around in her arms and clinked House’s signet against the pistons. 

Veronica kissed her forehead. Six had been barely anything when she showed up at the 188 last year with a ghoul and a pile of energy weapons and a magnificent powerful military-grade broadcasting radio. She ran through errands like a music box winding down, looking a little peaky. Sold her bounty off to the Gun Runners for a formidable shotgun and better boots. Traded the radio off to the NCR armswoman for nearly all her stock, held court at her truck for hours trading bullets for maps and rumors. Talked to the spooky kid under the lee of the overpass, bought him dinner. 

This time back, she was starting to fill out a little bit more, turning endless brahmin and bighorner steaks into a healthy protective layer of fat over her abs.

Six tilted her head against the full moon. “Darling, you were the prettiest thing I’d seen.”

“You were awake for, what, a week?”

“Doesn’t make it less true! All I can really remember is you punching that centurion’s jaw off. I was already in love, you didn’t need to impress me any more!”

“And then you told me right there.”

“Then you said I couldn’t kiss you because you were covered in foreign contaminants!”

“Blood is a major disease vector!” 

* * *

Six remembered three things from her old life a week after waking up. One, half of the plot of the last romance novel she read, but not the title or the author or the cover. Two, a news brief about a spectacularly dumb grift that had finally blown up in two outlaws’ faces somewhere on the Big Circle. Three, men and other people in general were okay but girls, specifically this girl in front of her, a stocky brunette with a power fist and a power stance, were where it’s at. 

Maybe it was the rads from rescuing Raul off Black Mountain. Maybe it was shoving her battered body across a desert- she was fairly certain she used to be able to walk faster. Maybe it was shock washing over her from almost dying, flat on her back on the desert floor in sight of New Vegas. Maybe it was something deep in her bones, from before she got shot. Whatever combination of reasons it was didn’t matter. Veronica, terrible hood splattered with bits of a centurion’s face, was the most beautiful person she’d ever seen. 

Veronica ripped her flannel open, buttons rolling everywhere like in the romance novel, found a plain navy bulletproof vest with NCRF hastily stenciled on the front, a 9mm embedded over her heart. 

Six, covered in blood, looked up in blind adoration. “I love you.”

Veronica laughed, the nervous laugh of a closeted lesbian. “You don’t mean that. It’s the adrenaline talking.”

“Can’t and won’t take it back,” she said, and put her head back down. 

Raul wheezed up, rifling through a battered medkit. “Boss, you wanna maybe take this stimpak, make an old man feel better?”

Six held out a limp wrist. “Veronica, can I kiss you?”

* * *

“That first day was a pretty good indicator of how our lives were going to go, huh.”

Six made a thoughtful little noise under her chin. “Didn’t think it would be this much waiting around.” 

“I’m sorry you can’t shoot this problem.”   


“Well,”

“No.”

“ _ Well, _ I could, but it would just make more problems.”

A pale, rangy woman was walking fast up the onramp.

“Coming up on the right.” Veronica whispered into Six’s hair.

“Mmmm. Least it can’t be Legion.” Six ducked under Veronica’s arm. 

The woman came to a stop at parade rest. “Courier Six?”

Six leaned back against the rail, shot her a brilliant smile. “The very same.”

The woman looked her over more carefully. “You’re shorter than I expected. Mari Stillabunt, from Stillabunt Salt.”

“I’m travel size. I notice you haven’t got any salt with you.” Six made further note of a rifle slung across her back, a .45 with an ivory grip, a boot knife, and a very tense stance. 

Mari smiled a tight smile. “The family thought it wisest not to send more shipments until this...misunderstanding can be cleared up.” 

“What misunderstanding would that be?” Veronica said. 

“Who are you?” The unspoken  _ and why should I care _ hung between them. 

Six said “Mari Stillabunt, of Stillabunt Salt in Salt City, this is Veronica Santangelo, procurement specialist of New Vegas.” 

“You misunderstand the law of supply and demand.”

“Oh, no, I understand that you want to make more money.” Veronica said. 

“Just buy from the NCR then if you don’t like our prices.”

“ _ You’re  _ the closest salt supplier for the NCR. Why go through a middleman, and why bother going through all this trouble when you could wholesale?”

Mari shifted back to let an NCR patrol pass through, still tense. “Let’s talk about this over a drink, like civilized people.”

“Guest’s choice.” Six’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. 

Mari did a full loop of the upper market before deciding on the very busy, very loud Slop ‘n Shop. Six sat down at the bar next to a tall dark-haired man. Veronica sat Mari between them. 

Mari slammed down a shot and took a deep breath. In the clamor of a Sunday night, everyone getting back from a weekend in Vegas, she had a very loud argument with Veronica about capitalism. In between citing pre-War thinkers Six had never heard of when the NCR patrol was on the opposite side of the overpass, she whispered the news that the NCR was putting pressure on them not to sell to New Vegas at all. Boycotts were threatened. The Stillabunt family’s pet senator couldn’t do anything. The Stillabunts were good at one thing, and that one thing was the business of distilling and moving salt and water. A boycott would ruin them, and New Vegas didn’t have the buying power or the demand of the NCR. 

“And you don’t have any weird errands or tasks we can do to sweeten the offer?” Six asked, a little skeptical. “No big weird monsters you need killed, human or otherwise?”

“Nothing.” 

“What a lovely talk,” Six said, keeping an eye on the NCR patrol slowly looping back around. “ _ So _ nice to meet you, Mari, we’ll be in touch.” 

Mari left, headed down to the lower market to find a bed. 

“Well, procurement specialist, your thoughts?” 

Veronica rolled a shot glass between her palm and the bartop, thinking. “Diablo and Badwater are farther, but I bet they’ve got the same pressures.” 

“ _ Fuck _ . Bet you a bottlecap we’ll have this same conversation about gunpowder, too. Why is this our problem to solve again?” Six sagged against the bar, frowning at the patrol walking away. 

“We live here.”

“We live somewhere with walls.” She glanced up at the moon. “Well, it’s still early enough that we can make it home before it gets really awful, I think. I’d like to sleep in my own bed. Boys?”

Angel turned to face her properly. Blondie materialized from the shadows behind the Slop ‘n Shop. 

“Show’s over. Let’s go home to our designated survivor.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is of course from the Fatboy Slim song, which headlines my playlist for her. 
> 
> The 188 Trading Post is where Highways 93 and 95 meet. In-game there are like four different traders, a fortune teller, and Veronica. There should be way more here, it should be a thriving bustling market for people to stock up/get rid of shit they couldn’t in Vegas. 
> 
> At least it can’t be Legion- all the Legion women you meet are slaves. All the Legion spies you meet are men. 
> 
> Mari Stillabunt- when I’m REALLY stuck on names I go hunting in Latin (sea + one of the verb forms of “distill”). Her name was almost just Morton but I thought “no, we can be more pretentious than that.” Salt City is on the shores of the modern-day Salton Sea. 
> 
> hey J.E. Sawyer where the FUCK does New Vegas get its salt??? both the Devils’ Playground and Badwater Basin salt flats in the real-life Mojave seem solidly within NCR territory. According to USGS maps, there are a couple salt mines off Lake Mead. are they big enough to supply the greater Mojave area? are they contaminated by radiation in 2281? WHO KNOWS NOT ME


	8. luck be a lady (geometries, tuco)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Veronica and Six have a relaxing night out on the town, courtesy of Gomorrah.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The geometries joke is that the Gomorrah layout is FUCKT and an incredibly confusing space to move about in. This takes place not long after my Courier met Veronica, about three weeks in-game. Like Blondie and Angel, this Tuco is so far divorced from his film counterpart he’s essentially an OC. You do not need to have watched The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly to enjoy this piece.

There were two kinds of women in the world- those that loved Tuco Ramirez and those who wanted to see him dead. So far, it was about fifty-fifty.

Those that ignored him completely at his own roulette table- those were the interesting ones. A small dark woman in a little black dress slapped a stack of chips down on six, pretending not to watch one of the Gomorrah lieutenants talk to one of the cashiers.

He blinked down at the wheel as she whispered  _ shit _ to herself and cut through the crowd, leaving her friend to collect her hefty winnings. 

He had a break coming up, and this was more interesting than anything that’d happened this month. He needed the receptionist. 

Jammed into a single-stall bathroom with him, close-up Belladonna looked very well kissed, a bruise in the shape of a mouth blooming just above her collar.

“She called in my sister’s debt. Pointed her at Cachino and Troike, and maybe she can get into Clanden’s suite. Maybe she’ll kill them like she did Benny.” 

“ _ That’s  _ that courier?” She didn’t look like anything. She was only distinguishable by the pallor of a recent RadAway treatment. The woman with her, a stocky powerhouse showing off her shoulders in a frothy sleeveless purple number, was much more conspicuous. 

“Scars aren’t fake, so she’s either really committed to the role or she’s the real deal.”

He waggled his eyebrows at her. “You get real personal with those scars? Wanna take care of that love bite or you looking for more?” 

“That little bastard- hey, you suddenly have a hot sister I don’t know about?” 

He pouted at her, and she pouted right back at him in the mirror, patching over the bruise. 

Someone pounded on the door. “Occupied!” she sang out, breathy. The someone swore not very inventively at them. 

“You ready?”

They tumbled out of the bathroom into Cachino, Belladonna giggling and batting her eyes at him. Tuco walked her back to the front desk, arm around her waist. It was nice to have a hot lady on his arm again, even if the hot lady was a lesbian spy for House. 

The courier put in some miles flitting back and forth across the floor, looking more and more irritated each time. On his next break, he called in a favor of his own and followed her downstairs. 

She turned the corner, pivoting on one dainty heel, and pulled him into a utility closet. He had a knee at his groin and a switchblade at his throat before he could get at the holdout pistols in his cuffs. 

“Sweetheart, I’m not on the menu here.”

“I am having, quite frankly, an absolutely miserable time in your casino, but I don’t think you just got a promotion to guest relations.”

“You can’t kid a kidder. Bella sent me.”

“Make me believe you.” She already had the tired, haunted look Gomorrah gave everybody. 

“She’s taking care of her sister’s debt, and I’m keeping these pinstriped idiots off her back because I owe  _ her _ a debt. What’s in this for you?”

“All your girls look half dead and I want to know why. I don’t want that bullshit happening outside my front door.” 

He stalled for time to take in the scars, which certainly did look real. “You’re that courier who got shot in the head, huh?”

“I got better.” 

His curse was tough bastards who survived things they shouldn’t and thought they were funny. 

She took the knife away from his throat, but kept it open and stayed close enough to gut him fast. “What’s your opinion of the Legion?”

“Not much worse than the NCR.”

That made her huff out a tiny little laugh. “Did you know the Legion are planning to take over the Strip with your bosses’ help?”

Oh, he didn’t like the sound of where today was going at all. She looked intense and more than a little scary, like someone who really had taken Benny’s head off in his own casino (even though the rat bastard had what was coming to him). 

She continued, flipping the knife end over end. “Troike says Cachino’s got something on him and Clanden. I need to get to both of them.”  
“You could get near Clanden, but you might not get back out. Your friend’s more his type, she might have better luck.” 

“I can’t let her get hurt.”

“She doesn’t look like she  _ can _ get hurt.” 

He got an unamused look. “I like to keep my… people safe.”

_ Oh.  _ This opened up all sorts of fun possibilities. “Look. There’s a...arrangement I used to have, with an old partner. You stage an argument- one of you pretends to be real smug about it, and one of you pretends to be real broken up. The smug one gets to sit and attract all the attention, and people always wanna help the sad one, do them little favors, maybe get them behind the scenes where they shouldn’t be. Bella can do a lot from the front desk.”

He had her. This one liked attention too. 

Six and Veronica staged a riproaring fight right there on the main floor. There were swears he had never heard. There was screaming. There was a slap. There was a  _ scene.  _

Tuco helped Veronica away to the elevators, solicitously murmuring “Baby doll, let’s get you a drink,” He could feel Bella glaring at him from the front desk, to keep that particular ruse going.

Six flung herself into an armchair and directed a dazzling smile to the nearest girl. “Darling, my dance card seems to have freed up tonight.” 

Veronica’s shoulders really tensed up at that, but she cried like a champ until they were in the elevator. “That was...a lot.” she said, accepting a silenced .22. 

“She seems like a handful.” 

That got him another little laugh. “Several handfuls.” 

He walked her past the guards outside Clanden’s room, gave him his biggest smile. “Cachino says to cheer this one up.”

He waited outside, leaned against the wall, smiled. She popped back out with a blazer over her shoulders, looking none the worse for wear, smiling a bright smile at the guards. “Out of ice!”

“Down this way, baby.” 

“I’ve got blood all over my side,” she whispered. Her tone was too casual for it to be her blood, so he shoved aside the worry that the Courier would come after him for her girl getting hurt and speedwalked them to Belladonna’s rooms. She was a good actress, he had to give her that.

“None of this is going to fit! Belladonna’s as small as Six!” she hissed at him.

“Don’t murder someone all sloppy!”

“He tried to kill me first!” 

“I’ll be back. Stay here.” 

She slouched against Bella’s tiled bathroom wall, glaring at him.

* * *

“And that’s when he woke up and said ‘Thursday!’” Six’s small crowd of admirers burst into laughter.

The girls on the floor suspected something was up, but they were perfectly happy to sit and flirt at her, splashing around House’s money like it was nothing, and everyone paid attention to where all the girls were. 

“Bella! Guest emergency!” he hissed at her until she ducked into the back office. “I need a new dress for the other one, none of yours fit.”

“That key is for emergencies! A dress is not an emergency!”

“It’s covered in Clanden’s blood!” 

She lit up at that, danced around the filing cabinets in a joyful little circle. “Joana’s her size,” she said, fetching up against him. “She used to be that built. Keep Cachino busy.” 

There were more girls around Six when he came back through the main room, and he had to go nearly to Joana’s rooms before he found Cachino in the lower bar. “Hey, boss, we got something weird on the main floor.” 

He wished he’d taught Six some of the hand signals he used to have, and put all his effort into one desperate glance. 

She gave them a dazzling smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Mr Cachino, isn’t it? I’ve heard  _ so _ much about you.”

Cachino had a weakness for brunettes. He didn’t even notice Tuco leave. 

It’d been almost an hour since Veronica killed Clanden, and they had maybe another hour before someone checked in on him. He powerwalked back faster with green silk he wasn’t sure turned into a whole dress. 

“Those ladies before the War knew what they were doing, but I bet they didn’t have to hide a gun anywhere.” Veronica said from behind the screen. 

“Bella keeps hers in her bra.” He was living a long con, but having something new to keep going was nice. He’d missed this. 

“You can’t wear a bra in  _ this _ dress.” 

“Garters?”

She made a thoughtful little noise and dangled the .22 over the screen. He passed back a holdout pistol. When she came out from behind the screen, only the thought that she would kill him with his own holdout pistol kept his mouth shut. The Courier was a lucky woman.

Six had a bigger group around her, feet up in Cachino’s lap. “So that,” she said, swirling most of a glass of whiskey around, “is when I said ‘No, thank you!’” 

Cachino wiped tears away from his face. “Tuco, get this funny broad a private suite, even if you have to kick someone out. See if you can’t get these lovebirds reunited. I’ll be up later, with some appetizers,” he winked.

Six purred, “Oh, Cachino, you know how to make a girl feel wanted,” and shared an eyeroll with Belladonna over his shoulder as he pulled her in for a hug that went just a little too long.

Tuco passed the ledger in his pocket to Bella, who tucked it behind her clipboard. She pasted a smile back on. “We’ve got the honeymoon suite for your party, if you’ll follow me?”  
Tuco offered his other arm to Six, and they all paraded into the elevator. 

“I want to kill Cachino myself,” she said, eyes hard.

“The honeymoon suite is right this way,” Bella said, a warning as the doors opened. 

Six flopped onto the big heart-shaped bed. “Holy shit, babe, you look hot as hell in green.” 

“I am not having a good day.” Veronica said, and flopped next to her, showing off more thigh than was appropriate for Tuco to stare at without being gutted.

Six rolled over, kissed her hair. “Hey, hey, I got you. This is the last casino. Can’t be any more of this brahmin shit.”

Tuco had not heard anything about a change of management at the Ultra-Luxe, so whatever brahmin shit happened there couldn’t have been that serious.

Bella watched them, eyes soft, until Tuco nudged her.

“Cachino’s been dealing behind the family’s back.” She handed a tiny black book to Six. “You give that to Big Sal, you get an audience with Nero. They’ll kill him tonight for this.”

“You got a couple more problems, and they’re all gun-shaped. There’s a shipment of guns locked in the basement I can’t get to, and I want Nero and Big Sal out of the picture. This place needs some new management.” 

Bella answered fast, like she’d been thinking about this for a long time. “Big Sal is afraid Nero will double cross him. After Cachino dies, tell him Nero ordered you to take him out too, he’s cleaning house. One of them will die in the gunfight, and you can take out the other and his two guards easy.”

* * *

“House’s pet Courier, huh? You gonna shoot me like you did Benny?”

“Dunno,” Six said, accepting Nero’s cigar. “You a rat bastard?”

“Hm. Courier, we’d like to show House how we deal with traitors.”

When Six declined whiskey, Nero flashed her a fake grin. “Ain’t poisoned. Sal!”

Sal clinked her glass with Nero’s and took a healthy gulp. 

Cachino walked in and stopped when he saw Six, sprawled in an armchair. “Aw, boss, I didn’t even touch her!’ he whined.

Nero tapped the little black book on his desk. “You've been with the Family long enough to know how this goes. I'm sorry you had to fuck this up, we’ve been friends for a real long time. You were a real benefit to the business. Goodbye.”

The guards dragged his body out, giving her a glimpse of Tuco and Veronica outside. She gave them a little wave, and Veronica waved back before the soundproof doors closed. 

Nero leaned back. “Cachino gone, we could use another pair of competent hands, and I think you can provide that.”

Six snorted. “You sure could. You’re not done cleaning house, are you? Kill your second to prove my loyalty, so you can throw  _ me _ in a dumpster when you get bored? Nooooo thank you.” She slammed the rest of Nero’s whiskey down.

Big Sal instantly turned on his boss, sending Six’s whiskey over the floor. “I knew this day would come!’

Six flung herself off the chair onto the floor, avoiding the crossfire.

Six stared at the former casino bosses, then the guards. “Well.” she said, and flashed a real grin. “My casino now.”

One of them swung up his gun. She kneecapped him right through her dress with Benny’s pistol on her thigh. The other one wisely dropped his gun.

Bella answered at the front desk. “Yes, boss?” 

“Bella, I would like to make you a present of a real shithole casino.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from the song made famous by Sinatra. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X69P_Vce9vw
> 
> The shit that goes down in Gomorrah is frankly horrifying and I don’t want to write about it so we’re just going to elide over almost all of it. 
> 
> Belladonna is a DND character that gets to come play because I think she would get along swimmingly with Six and the Gomorrah receptionist (who really is a spy for House in-game) is kind of a blank slate. 
> 
> One of my favorite tropes is someone coming in at the end of a joke and getting a no-context punchline. If Arcade goes down during combat, one of the lines he says when he wakes up is “Thursday!” 
> 
> Almost all of Nero and Big Sal's dialogue is straight from the game.


End file.
